Thursday, September 6, 2007

Oh, Reege!

Laptop Lane isn't the only business for business that Regus Group is pursuing. Take telepresence:

[Cisco Systems] said last month it expects revenue to grow 16 percent in the current quarter, ending in October, and Chairman and CEO John Chambers said it stands by that estimate....

He sees Web 2.0 technologies such as social networking and wikis moving into enterprises alongside TelePresence, Cisco's big-screen, high-definition system for audio and video meetings. The company is so confident that enterprises will buy TelePresence that it's planning a suite of line cards for its flagship Catalyst switches that is designed to minimize jitter and other network problems to ensure the best TelePresence experience....

Even as it crows about the superior quality of its own system, Cisco is also offering a version of TelePresence that can be hooked up with customers' existing videoconferencing points. The system, called Cisco Unified Conferencing for TelePresence, protects enterprises' investments in other conference platforms and has helped overcome resistance in some sales, Chambers said in an interview at the event. It's one more way to ease customers into TelePresence, along with a recent deal in which Regus Group will set up TelePresence facilities in its rental business centers, Chambers said.


TelePresence at Regus Centers? I don't know if this means that every ex-Laptop Lane will get it. Presumably it will cost more than a dollar a minute, though, wherever it may be. Speaking of which:

Regus Group, the world’s largest provider of temporary offices and work stations, is launching drop-in business lounges for city centres worldwide and transportation hubs like airports and train stations....

The new drop-in business lounges will ‘cater to the changing way that companies and people are working [today]’, Regus chief executive Mark Dixon said in a conference call with journalists....

‘You can drop into these lounges for a half an hour, for three hours, and work cost-effectively. Eventually we’ll be rolling these out over the next couple of years to all of our centres worldwide…to [more than] 400 cities and over 1,000 locations globally.’...

During the half [year], Regus said it opened 61 new facilities, with acquisitions accounting for 17 of these....

Regus’s plans to introduce drop-in business lounges at transport hubs comes as delays at such major UK airports as Heathrow have become a growing frustration for many regular business travellers.

Some of Britain’s train lines also have problems with delays and cancellations that force passengers to spend hours waiting for the next service. Some train lines, meanwhile, give substantial discounts to those passengers who travel outside of peak times, obliging price-conscious travellers to wait as long as several hours before boarding their train if they don’t want to pay the highest rate.

Regus’s 3 More London Business Lounge is a 10-minute walk from London Bridge train station, according to Regus corporate communications head Claire Gosnell. Outside of London the cost of using the drop-in lounges will be lower than £15, she added.


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